by Ben Loory
But in the stairwell on the way back from the trash, the man passes himself carrying the television down to the trash. He stops to congratulate himself on his wisdom and strength, but his other self averts his eyes, hoping not to be noticed. The man begins to take offense and is about to say something, when both of them are elbowed aside by a third version of the man who is carrying his TV back up from the trash. The man hurries after himself, yelling No, No, I don’t want that anymore! but he doesn’t listen. As they enter the apartment, the man on the couch looks up from the TV in irritation. Why can’t everyone leave him alone? The room is packed with versions of the man, running here and there, talking to himself about this and that, making plans on the phone and staring out the window and falling in love and falling out of love and finding himself loved and unloved and hated and feared and liked and disliked and ignored and unknown and known. He is fired, promoted, rehired, and refired, has found a new place to live and is moving out, is moving in and repainting, is in the other room dying and in the kitchen being born. There is too much going on. The man walks out the door and down the hall and into the next apartment. Mommy, Mommy, scream his children, what’s for breakfast? The man makes French toast and waffles and ham and eggs and pancakes and cereal and Pop-Tarts and brownies and hot dogs and hamburgers and Baked Alaska and a birthday cake in the shape of a castle and pours glasses of milk and orange juice and coffee and Tang and Kool-Aid and water and puts ice in all the glasses, trying to ignore himself as he murders each and every one of the kids over and over and over again in hundreds of different ways and gets a job in another country under an assumed name and pees all over the dining room floor and draws on the wall in crayon. He takes the kids down to the bus stop seven hundred times and he drives the bus to school—drunk, sober, hungover, on acid, pot, cocaine, uppers and downers, or nothing at all—it doesn’t matter in the least, he gets in an accident every foot of the way, or he doesn’t. At school, he gets in a fight on the playground and is sent to the office, or doesn’t and isn’t, or does and isn’t, or doesn’t and is. He gives himself a good lecture, maybe, winks at the secretary he has or has not been banging for the past two weeks, or four weeks, or ten weeks, or no weeks, then hurries slowly to the women’s room, realizing that it is or is not his time of the month, mops none or half or all of the gym, and goes out back to have a smoke or stare at the sky or remember the time he accidentally ate a spider or became president or something else or nothing else or everything else. He flies to the next town over and perches in all the trees, then falls to the ground in several different countries and is blown away by the wind, which hammers endlessly in all the ears he has—more than he is capable of counting—for approximately 93 billion years, as good a guess as any to a time outside of time.
The man especially loves it when he is a doctor, a lawyer, a caveman, a cowboy, an old man who owns a luncheonette and talks to the people who come in to eat every day. He hates it when he is a doctor, a lawyer, a caveman, a cowboy, an old man who owns a luncheonette and talks to the people who come in to eat every day, but he loves it when he is a comedian, a beautiful young model, an astronaut, the king of England, a profiler working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It is very exciting. He loves to taunt the profiler by sending him long, cryptic notes written in human blood. He knows he will never catch him, and even if he does, it doesn’t really matter because he is already dead and buried and being eaten by worms and will probably just get another medal and a raise anyway.
Sometimes the man cries himself to sleep at night, but usually he just changes the channel. He has not been able to find his way to the office; he doesn’t know where they put it. He rings and rings, but the nurse no longer answers his calls. One night he discovers that his lips are horribly chapped. This strikes him as the worst thing that has ever happened, and he sobs uncontrollably for almost fourteen seconds. Then, once more, he opens the fist.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE STORIES IN THIS BOOK GREW OUT OF A CLASS I TOOK in horror writing taught by Dennis Etchison at the Mystery and Imagination Bookshop in Glendale, California (owned and operated by Christine and Malcolm Bell).
The stories were edited by my friend Maureen de Sousa; my mother, Barbara Loory; and my editor (and personal savior) Josh Kendall at Penguin Books.
This book would not exist without the support of Willing Davidson at The New Yorker and the strange and miraculous prestidigitation of my friend and agent Sarah Funke Butler.
The following people provided invaluable assistance as readers and listeners and thinker-throughers: above all, my screenwriting partner Andra Moldav (to whom I owe solutions to many conundrums), Aaron Dietz, Alex Reed, Andrew Ramer, Anna Dale, Bonnie Thompson, Brad Listi, Brian Doucet, Brian Travis, Brian Wright, Carl Harders, Charlotte Howard, Chrissy Wasserman, Claudia Barria, Desi Fish, Duke Haney, Gina Rho, Grant Story, Heather Conley, Irene Zion, Jack Long, Jack Zipes, James Othmer, Jason Vincz, Jenieke Allen, Jennifer Guinn, Jennifer Peltz, Jennifer Weaver-Jones, Jeremy Tolbert, Jodi Kaplan and Mike Lester, Jonathan Evison, Keith Dixon, Kelci M. Kelci, Lara Loory, Lauren Becker, Lenore Zion, Lindsay Foose, Loomis Fall, Lora Grillo, Maggie Riggs, Maggie Tiojakin, Mark Krieger, Margaret Walsh, Martyn Conterio, Mary Guterson, Matt Comito, Michael Armida, Mike Armstrong, Moses Robinson, Nina Kuruvilla, Patty Gates, Roxane Gay, Scott Garson, Stacey Kirkland, Stephanie Warren, Steve Himmer, and Trish Bash.
Thanks to my family and friends who kept me sane, all the editors who printed my stories, the members of Soda & His Million Piece Band, The Peculiar Pretzelmen, The Nervous Breakdown, and the Fiction Files.
This book was written exclusively to Alina by Arvo Pärt.
Happy Birthday, Megan Nico DiLullo!